


Where The Streets Have No Names

by Robb Stark (RyloKen)



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, And A Cage Fighter, Angst with a Happy Ending, At Least It Is Until Sansa Finds Out, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Guilt, Half-Sibling Incest, I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Incest, Incest Babies, Jon Is That Hug, Jon Likes Trashy Romance Novels, Jon Snow is a Stark, Minor Ramsay Bolton/Sansa Stark, N plus A equals J, Namely His Daughter, Ned Likes Doing Things He's Not Supposed To, Nightmares, Parent/Child Incest, Plot With Porn, Porn With Plot, Pregnancy, Ramsay Bolton Exists, Ramsay Bolton is His Own Warning, Regret, Sansa Makes A Mistake, Sansa Stark Needs a Hug, Secret Relationship, Sins, Smut, Unplanned Pregnancy, Who Is Not Sansa, and his sister
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:26:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22054771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyloKen/pseuds/Robb%20Stark
Summary: She hates herself for kissing him.And she hates herself for liking it.He tastes like Sunkist and chewing gum and his tongue licks into her mouth as if he’s done it a million times before.She runs away after that, that first taste of sin, and hides herself in a diner on the edge of some nondescript town with a milkshake in her hands to keep herself from shaking apart.He isn’t hers to kiss, isn’t hers to want.He isn’t hers.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Ned Stark/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 61





	Where The Streets Have No Names

༺✬༻❀༺♡༻☽❆☾༺♡༻❀༺✬༻

_When we grew up, our shadows grew up too,_  
_But they're just old ghosts that we grow attached to.  
The tragic flaw is that they hide the truth, that you're enough.  
I promise you're enough.  
I promise you._

[You Are Enough - Sleeping At Last](https://youtu.be/LX3lvwks7NU)

༺✬༻❀༺♡༻☽❆☾༺♡༻❀༺✬༻

There was a time when her life was filled with laughter, when all the threads she’d pulled formed a tapestry fit for viewing and the holes she’d punched into her life were filled with trips to shitty camp grounds and squealing sisters running from hellish brothers.

There was a time when things made sense.

She used to be a vibrant girl, her hair as bright as a blazing fire and eyes the blue of a sky lit by fireworks, but the lights were turned off long ago and she hasn’t seen the sun in far too long.

She used to blame them, the others, the ones she pushed away; they were wrong, twisted, disgusting.

Now she’s something worse.

She sees it now, when she thinks of what she saw, when she reflects on how she found them.

It wasn’t wrong, just different.

Certainly not bad, not like what she has, what she found, what she made for herself.

Her bed is broken and the springs she’s forced to sleep on stab her in the spine every time she turns but she lives with it because she made it.

She knows she deserves it.

She broke their family after all.

So sure, so resolute.

She was doing the right thing.

She told.

All but shouted their secret to the damned world.

She was _wrong_.

Tears stain her cheeks but they fall silently.

She’s gotten good at silence, at mourning for what she’s become since the moment she thought she knew better.

 _He’s_ there.

He’s always there.

Even when he’s not, he is.

Her hands no longer shake as she covers her eyes and pretends she’s back in that gorgeous home she wrecked.

Five bedrooms, all large enough to hide the fact that most of them still had to share.

The walls were a hideous lemony colour that none of them had the guts to tell their mother was truly awful and the house always smelled of fresh cookies and the wilting flowers their father used to bring home twice a week.

The memory is a picture book of home and happiness until the edges bleed and she remembers that she was the one who ripped it up and tore out all the pages.

_And they were happy._

Ignorant to the lies the walls had no mouths to spill.

She curls into a tighter ball and lives with the sharp stab of pain that shoots up her spine and begins to throb throughout her body.

She should have kept her mouth shut.

She should have been a wall.

Her mother had screamed the house down when she told her.

She thought herself so smart, so good, so pure.

Sweet summer smiles as she picked the petals free and let them flutter to the floor.

Her words were poison.

A truth.

She destroyed them, ripped up all the roses and stomped them into the ground just as surely as her mother trashed the kitchen.

The yellow walls looked only slightly better with cookies smashed against them.

The smell turned sour.

Cold set into her bones as she shook but still her cries were quiet.

Coffee dried on the floorboards as her mother blew through the house and tore it all to pieces.

No.

Not mother.

_Her._

_She_ tore the house down when she told _their_ secret.

The petals felt like wet velvet as she crushed them between her fingers.

Her eyes were so wide back then, her heart so loud.

But not loud enough.

Never loud enough.

Her own screams never reached that pitch, the pitch of jet planes and squealing tires and her sister being dragged down the stairs by her hair as their mother all but frothed at the mouth and called her a whore.

She shouldn’t have said.

She shouldn’t have told.

She got her own room.

Pink walls with posies on the door and a bed fit for a queen.

But it was too quiet.

Quiet enough for her to hear the crying.

Quiet enough for her to hear the smash of another bottle hitting the bathroom floor.

One.

Two.

_Another!_

The house was small and smelled of mildew and the wet of a dog they didn’t own.

She was alone.

_A tattler._

She was old enough to know her mother never worked, old enough to know the money she wasted on alcohol to numb the pain and shame came from a father she’d ruined.

He was gone.

Lost to her then.

Lost to her now.

Her hands shake as she pulls them from her face and she wonders how she doesn’t find them bloody.

He doesn’t hit her face, no, he likes her face, he likes her pretty.

_They were happy._

She isn’t.

She wonders where they are.

Where they all ended up.

A fistful of siblings all scattered to the winds because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut.

She thought it disgusting, horrible enough to tell, but now she knows what the difference is, what hate is, what betrayal is.

Pain.

Always pain.

They were beautiful, even as they sinned.

She covers her mouth with a shaky hand and lets her eyes fall closed.

It doesn’t stop the ache.

It doesn’t hide the truth.

Light snoring echoes through the small room and she’s not fool enough to think he’s truly sleeping.

He’s not drunk, he’s never drunk.

_Dulls the senses, sweetheart._

_And how then would I feel you coming apart at the seams?_

She hates him.

She _hates_ him.

She hates herself.

She saw a secret and she told and now, now she has no one to tell anything to.

Her sisters are gone.

Her brothers are gone.

Her father was stripped of everything that made him good and whole and was left with nothing when her mother learned the truth.

A truth she told.

A truth she skipped into the kitchen like a stupid little girl to tell.

_Mommy._

Mother’s gone too.

Lost to her demons, lost to her lies.

Lies she tells everyone.

Lies she tells herself.

_My husband died._

_My husband was hit by a truck._

_My husband was a rat bastard who hopefully fell into the sea and drowned._

Never the truth.

Never the real.

Never the part where he loved someone he shouldn’t.

Someone not her.

Someone sweeter.

Kinder.

Someone who sang songs under the covers when mother told them all to go to bed and stop being naughty.

Someone he shouldn’t.

_Shouldn’t have but did._

She bites her lip and clenches her eyes closed and relishes in the small amount of pain she feels that’s caused by her own hands and no one else’s.

She shouldn’t have told.

He shouldn’t have loved someone else.

But they hid it.

Hid it so well.

Kisses in the dark.

Touches the soft of lovers and more than they should be.

She wonders what that feels like and weeps to know she took that from them.

Her breath is a shaky wet thing that hardly fills her lungs but breathing hurts too much and she thinks she may be as broken as the home she used to dance through.

Her fingers shake, as she slowly stretches her hand out to lightly feel around for the phone on the nightstand.

The light is dim, always dim, always on the lowest setting, but she hides it beneath her pillow all the same and keeps her breaths slow to hear his better.

She types slowly, as if she’s some cave dweller who has never seen a phone before let alone taught herself to text without looking.

It’s dangerous, she knows.

So dangerous.

Like leaning into a blade held sharp to the throat.

Like holding out a bloody hand to a snarling dog that hasn’t been fed in days.

_Like telling a mother a secret she never would have dreamed was true._

Tears blur her vision and she’s thankful she doesn’t need her sight to send her plea.

She wonders if they’ll come.

She wonders if they’ll see her message and leave her to rot in the pit she happily jumped into because she knew better.

She was wrong.

_She was wrong._

She wants to scream it to the world because nothing they ever did was close to what she now knows to be true sin.

She tore off their wings and called them sinners with a smile on her face and now she sleeps with the devil and wonders why she bleeds.

Time takes so long to pass as she waits, but she does, in silence and with her heart in her throat.

She thinks of waiting for cookies to bake, of standing in line for the bathroom with her pretty pink basket full of dainty toiletries while her siblings stand as sleep-drunk lumps behind her, all waiting while the sister she told on sings as a lively lark and washes away the scent of sin from her skin.

No one knew.

They were all happy not knowing.

Ignorance _was_ bliss.

_She ruined everything._

The tiny corner light of her phone flashes an optimistic purple and she sucks down a breath to hold in her aching lungs as she slides the screen open and tries not to let hope be the noose that hangs her.

_Arya has left the chat._

_Bran has left the chat._

_Robb has left the chat._

_Arya has joined the chat._

Go fuck yourself, traitor.

_Arya has left the chat._

She closes the app and locks the screen with shaking fingers.

Her lungs feel as balloons blown up too tight and ready to pop.

Her heart feels as if it is made of glass with cracks already forming.

_Imperfect._

Imperfect _from the moment she told._

Her pillow, a scratchy thing with lumps and sweat stains in the cotton, catches her tears as it always does.

It’s a sad truth she accepts, that her pillow is the closest thing she has to support in her life.

Her mother is gone.

But then.

But then she was never there.

She drank and she drank and she screamed and screamed and screamed until she silenced herself to drink more.

And then she smiled, cruel and with all the broken shards of her heart in her eyes as she dolled herself up.

The man she brought home was a sweet kind of evil, a snake wrapped up in a grin with coldness in his eyes and demons to his touch.

His words were poison.

His words were lies.

Lies she didn’t see until she was twisted up inside them and left outside in the cold.

_Songs always mocking._

Her phone flashes again, white light a steady thrum that beckons her back from the edge of her own insanity.

She stares at it for so long she almost falls asleep.

She stares at it.

She stares.

When she opens it, when she sees, she hides it again, deletes it from her phone and from her life and from her mind.

It’s gone.

_Gone._

Gone like family nights spent conspiring with each other over how best to defeat their smirking father at monopoly.

They never did.

None of them.

_Not even the one he loved the most._

She doesn’t sleep, and she tears out the rose of hope that tries to bloom in her belly.

Nothing grows in her garden now.

She won’t let it.

Maybe she never will.

She pretends, then, for as long as she must.

Day after day.

Every dance with the devil is with a gun full of lead.

He’s a shark with ice for eyes, a boy from the grave with a hunger for blood.

He’s soulless, empty.

He fucks like he’s waging war, with poisons in his pockets and a fistful of knives.

She bleeds, whether she wants to or not.

She screams, whether she can make the sounds or not.

Her body is a canvas for his morbid art, a pale portrait with slashes of purple and red across the spine he’s painted up the middle.

There are pieces of her missing, pieces she didn’t know she had to spare and he finds them, hunts them, takes them out of her one by one until she’s as pinpricked as the midnight sky.

He doesn’t stop until he has them all.

_All of her pieces._

Until what was her is gone.

_As gone as the family she ruined._

_As gone as the light._

She used to think the greatest monster she could ever face was the one under her bed, but that one always stayed away, always shrunk back into the shadows when her father came to defend her from the dark.

But there’s no father now, no sword against the evil lurking in the night.

The shadows wear smiles and they like to lick fire up her flesh.

Time stops meaning anything as she forgets the promise of a message sent so long ago she isn’t sure if it was days or years or all in her head.

She burns, and bites her mouth bloody just to keep the cries silent as his sigil sears her rump and he laughs to see her branded.

He laughs and he laughs and she knows he’s hard for it.

He’s always hard for it.

Pent up and waiting for her to scream.

It isn’t her who screams but the room is filled with it.

For a second she thinks she’s hearing things, lost in a nightmare that’s just more of the same she faces when she’s awake.

She takes her sleep as she can get it now.

Nothing scares her like the living.

But it’s there, the screaming.

She covers her ears as she hears it, and curls into a ball.

The pain is horrible, and it floods her system as she clutches at her head and tries to push everything away.

The screaming stops, dies, turns to something like fingers in a bowl of mince with too many sauces tipped into the mix.

There’s panting, violent and angry and it takes her so long to realise it’s not his.

Slowly, as a rabbit poking its head free of a burrow to see if the dog has lost its trail, she turns her head to peek.

There’s a man there, at the end of her bed.

He’s taller than she remembers, broader in the shoulders than he was when she saw him last.

He moves like a wolf on the prowl, a beast on the hunt, and there’s something beautiful in the way his muscles ripple, the way his arm swings, the way he paints a portrait of his own.

He’s an artist with only red.

He’s violent.

Her voice sounds so unlike her own when she calls his name and he’s so far gone in his rage that she has to repeat it, again and again as if those simple three letters are a prayer.

When he looks up, there’s heat in his gaze, a fire she’s never seen before, not even in the hell she calls her home.

He’s a mess, covered in blood and pieces of the devil she doesn’t want to think about, but he’s there, he came.

Like he said.

_Like he promised._

He gets up with all the grace of a cat and he’s there beside her, lost to the state he’s in.

His hand looks broken when he lifts it to her face but he doesn’t touch her.

It’s almost as if he’s too afraid he’ll shatter the glass she’s made herself out of.

When he picks her up, she clings to him, startled and weak and too afraid to mention that he’s dripping the blood of monsters all over her.

She’s too afraid to mention that she’s naked, that her arse, and the brand burned across it, is on full display for anyone to see.

She says nothing because saying anything put her there.

Her lips remain sealed as they should.

As they should have.

_Unlike back then._

He takes her to the bathroom and sets her on the toilet with the lid closed.

His hands are broad and his fingers are long and blunt; she notices that his nails are bitten down and uneven and that his knuckles are split and swollen.

Still, she says nothing and simply watches as he fills the pastel green sink with warm water and sets about cleaning the blood from her porcelain skin.

He’s gentle, quiet; he says nothing about the bruises that litter her body, the scars, the burns.

_Patchwork princess._

She knows he sees them; she knows he’s taking stock.

She’s a mess, but then they both are.

He’s a fighter, used to patching up wounds from hits that landed hard and fingers that cut where they shouldn’t.

There are scars there at his brows, down his cheeks; she knows he made them pay for every drop of blood they made him bleed, and she wonders if she’ll ever see him fight.

 _The White Wolf_ , they call him, and she only knows it because the devil liked to laugh about him.

The devil’s dead though, smashed to pieces by the brother he used to insult without ever having met him.

He hadn’t met any of them and it’s the only good thing that came out of her destroying their family.

She forgets herself for a time, thinking about what might have happened to her if she’d just kept walking that night.

_Got back in bed and dreamed stupid dreams._

A dancer, she thinks, or an actress.

She’s good at acting.

She smiles softly and wonders if their dream of owning a little family bakery ever would have happened.

Bran used to be such a big dreamer, always coming up with schemes that would keep them all together and see them set for life.

She would have liked to have spent her life cooking cupcakes and cookies, a smile on her face and frills on her apron.

Rickon would steal treats from the displays like he used to steal them from the kitchen, and Arya would waste more ingredients trying to make outlandish cakes than were required to make normal ones.

And her father.

She smiles to think of him, the man she ruined.

He would sit out back by the rickety security door with a coffee black as tar in one hand and a three-day old newspaper in the other.

He’d never read it, not really, his grey eyes full of love and laughter and hidden behind aviators he wore because he thought they made him look cool.

He’d pretend.

Just as she’d pretend that it annoyed her, even if he really did look good.

And _she’d_ be there, stretched out over her chair, pretty as a million-dollar painting with her long dark hair dancing in the wind and her smile bright and straight.

There’d be love in her eyes too, though the world would never accept it.

She doesn’t realise she’s crying until her brother pauses in his efforts to scrub blood and bone fragments from his shirt.

He turns to her, bare chested and glorious and goes to a knee in front of her.

The hands he lifts to cup her cheeks are the same ones he used to beat the monster in her closet to death, but he’s gentle, so fucking gentle, and she wants to scream at him, to hit him and kick him and push him away.

She wants to break him because it’s what she’s good at and he must see it, that need, that thought, because his eyes soften, the dark grey going to misty mornings as he bundles her against that naked chest of his and holds her as the dam breaks.

She cries then, and for the first time since her world turned to hell, she lets the tears have their sound.

He says nothing, simply holds her and soothes her and stays right where she needs him to be.

He’s strong and warm and a wall between her and the world she wants to hide from.

She wants to crawl inside his skin and stay there, burrow into his body and pretend she’s someone else, someone who isn’t such a fucking mess.

Someone who didn’t tear down their family home and smile while it fell apart.

Eventually the tears stop coming and the warmth of his embrace becomes too much for her to handle.

When she pulls away, he’s there, a soft smile on his full mouth and a sadness in his eyes that she’d hate if it were on anyone else but him.

He knows broken, he knows being alone.

She made sure he knew that when their father brought him home one day and told them all they had a brother from another mother.

She was horrible to him and it hurts her now, hurts in a way it wouldn’t if he were anyone else but he’s not, he’s the bastard she used to push out of the way and snap at, he’s the bastard whose clothes she used to toss in the mud after they’d been washed just so he’d have to do it all again, just so he’d get yelled at by the step-mother who refused to love him.

He’s the bastard who dropped everything without explanation and travelled halfway across the country to throw his career and his life into the dirt just to protect her from a monster.

He’s the bastard who saved her.

The tears stop, after that, when she stares at him and realises what he’s given up just to help the girl who ruined his life long before she ruined the lives of all the other Starks as well.

As if he knows, he smiles a little more and tucks her hair behind her ear.

Then he taps her under the chin like she’s some silly little kid and offers her his hand.

It’s a good hand, a strong hand, a hand he’s now killed with.

She wonders for a second if he’s done it before, but quickly pushes the thought away.

It isn’t what he’s done that matters, but what he offers.

And she knows, _she knows._

It’s the world he offers, right there in the palm of his busted hand.

_It’s a good hand._

It’s a hand she takes, a hand she clings to as he picks her up and carries her from the shitty little bathroom that stinks of mould and rusty old pipes.

Everything becomes a blur after that and she doesn’t remember him dressing her new wound or the angry flush he wears as he does it.

She doesn’t remember him dressing her or packing some of her things into a bag he’d brought with him, some camo duffle she thinks might be from his stint in the military.

She doesn’t remember being set like a child into the seat of his rental or him running back inside that shithole of a house; she doesn’t remember him rushing back out moments later, the dogs once kept locked in the basement now snarling behind the closed door as he slips behind the wheel with a smirk and a dark glint in his eyes.

She doesn’t remember him starting the car or the drive to a motel she knows he picks because it’s by the hour and doesn’t give two shits about the sorts of arseholes that stay there; the walls are a gross kind of washed out mustard yellow and there’s water stains on the ceiling, the carpet has some seriously questionable stains on it and the twin bed sags pitifully in the middle.

It’s a room straight out of some ‘80’s skin flick, right down to the tassels on the lampshades and the plastic adults only channel advert atop the shitty TV.

Everything is a blurry haze, a clusterfuck of broken shards inside her head that she can’t put in order but she’s there, there with the shady curtains, the mirrors on the ceiling and the generous offer of _Backdoor Sluts 9 for only $4.99_.

She’s never felt safer.

She sleeps, then, for so many hours that she skips two sunrises and wakes as the third is setting.

Her saviour is there, the same soft smile on his lips as he reads in the corner, his head lost in the pages of what she notes is a trashy romance novel all airports sell.

She almost wants to tease him about it, but doesn’t think she’s there yet.

She studies him instead, and takes in all the things that have changed since their worlds shifted orbits.

He’s still pretty in a way that makes most girls jealous; and now she’s old enough to acknowledge that she’s one of those girls, just as she’s old enough to no longer hate him for it.

He’s prettier than most girls she’s ever seen, really, but he’s also handsome in a way that hurts.

She thinks he belongs in movies, or in the pages of a high-end magazine selling ridiculously expensive watches and fragrances to the kinds of people who don’t blink at the extra zeros tacked onto the backend just because some fancy jerk slapped their seal of approval on the box.

She wonders what he must think of her, the nasty girl from his youth who put chilli powder in his underwear drawer and cut off all his dark curls while he slept.

It sets an ache throbbing in her chest to know that she was ever like that, that she was ever the monster to a boy trapped in a hostile cage through no fault of his own.

_And that her mother approved of her behaviour…_

He looks up from his book as if he’s heard her thoughts, and the smile turns warm, gentle, encouraging.

His eyes, a grey so dark they’re almost black, are full of fondness, and his voice is deeper than she’s ever heard it and washes over her like a warm cup of cocoa on a freezing cold afternoon.

It’s a piece of home she didn’t know she missed, the kindness of a voice not hellbent on twisting her insides into violent knots.

She huddles under the hooker sheets and tugs the blankets with her when she stands on her feet and finds her legs have been replaced with those of a newborn foal.

She stumbles, and he’s there, and she thinks she’d hate him for it, for treating her like a useless baby but he offers her his hand again instead of simply grabbing her and lets her choose.

She clings to him and lets him be a guide.

The table is plastic and the seat is foam that’s lost its bounce and height, but the food he’s bought is warm and filling and he says nothing when she devours it with all the decorum of a rabid trash-panda.

He reads, and reads, and when he pushes his portions over to her with a smile, he never stops reading.

She’s three chicken burgers down when she asks him about the book, and he’s two coffees in when he tells her about the maiden who slew a dragon to save a knight who’d tripped and fallen into a lake.

She laughs, and even if she knows he’s lying to cover up his own embarrassment, she continues to laugh.

It’s the first time in years, and it’s not the last.

That night is the last they spend in shady motels with scratchy sheets and horny neighbours.

He becomes someone else before her eyes, someone who was forced to live in a world where every wrong move could get you killed and every friend is an enemy waiting to find your weak spot.

He buys her new clothes and smiles softly when he pulls up at some fancy salon and hands over a black credit card as if they’ve been the closest of family since the day they were born.

He’s kind to her in a way she doesn’t know how to trust, but she knows she has to because he’s all she has now.

He stares when she gives the card back hours later, her hair as black as his and cut sharp and above the shoulders; she likes the lightness of it, the way it strikes down like a blade, as sharp as her jawline, as bold as the streak of natural red she left unchanged as a reminder of what’s beneath the lie.

A single streak of who she was _before_ cutting through the longest wave of who she wants to _be_.

She feels better, smug, and smirks when he blushes and looks away and stammers over his words as if he’s never seen a pretty girl in his life.

It helps strengthen the shroud she pulls tighter around herself, helps widened the foundation she’s attempting to build her walls upon.

He never pushes, never questions; he drives and he buys her food and he supply’s her freely with the comfort of his presence and his silence.

They drive for days, for weeks.

She forgets the names of the places they pass through as soon as they’ve passed through them.

She eats bad food without a care for the cost or the grease that stains her jeans when she wipes her fingers across her thighs.

She smiles at the sun as she watches it rise, and again when it kisses the sky goodnight and leaves them with no more light but for the twin beams of their headlights across an open horizon.

She doesn’t ask him where he’s taking her, and he never mentions the cuts that start appearing along his arms as if nails have dug into his skin and held on tightly.

His nails are as short as always and she starts trimming her own to match.

They become nobodies, just two faces in the crowd.

They fade into the background, though it’s harder for him and reason enough why they cling to the backroads and the backwater towns.

They listen to the radio and enjoy the country music if only for the fact it’s not some report on a beaten mutt left in a puddle of his own blood with his cock out and a cattle brand still in hand.

She supposes the starving dogs took care of it, and smiles as she watches the world zoom by her tinted window.

Life stops meaning anything more than the open road and the moments they make together.

It feels as if they’re on a road to nowhere with nothing but time, but she likes it, and slowly, slowly, it heals her enough that she no longer attacks him in her sleep and he no longer lives on coffee just to stay awake during his nightly vigils.

There’s a part of her, a piece she keeps hidden, that delights in the way he fights her demons for her, the one that hurt her body and the ones he can’t even see.

She picks up one of his trashy novels and can’t recall when the knights stopped wearing shining armour and started fighting evil with their fists raised and their grey eyes stormy.

She thinks herself a hypocrite, when she finally sees it for what it is.

She starts to pull away from him, afraid of what he’ll think, afraid of what he’ll say.

She has no idea what he went through when she tipped their world upside down because she was too busy patting herself on the back for telling a truth that wasn’t hers to tell.

In the end, she doesn’t hide it well enough, or he’s a different kind of observant than those she’s used to.

He’s not looking for weakness or fear, he’s just looking.

But the looks start to linger, start to heat.

She wonders if he even knows he’s doing it, the way he stares, the way he lets her see the gears turning in his pretty head.

He gets lost in his thoughts sometimes, she knows, because he doesn’t blush and look away like he usually does when she catches him, he just keeps on staring, keeps on rubbing his thumb back and forth across a bottom lip nipped and sucked until swollen and red.

He has a pretty mouth, she notices, and then hates herself for it.

He’s a sin waiting to happen and one she has no right in wanting, not after what she did.

Not after who she hurt.

She stops looking at him altogether but it solves nothing and soon enough she can’t help it, can’t stop it, can’t keep it to herself.

She hates herself for kissing him.

And she hates herself for liking it.

He tastes like Sunkist and chewing gum and his tongue licks into her mouth as if he’s done it a million times before.

She runs away after that, that first taste of sin, and hides herself in a diner on the edge of some nondescript town with a milkshake in her hands to keep herself from shaking apart.

He isn’t hers to kiss, isn’t hers to want.

_He isn’t hers._

She cries into her milkshake, and then cries over the slice of pie the motherly waitress brings her to cheer her up.

She cries then because of the fucking pie.

It tastes like home.

It tastes like how _she_ used to make it.

There’s sugar on the crust and brandy in the cream and she eats three slices before he finds her, before he accepts the forkful she offers to him, and then orders a slice for himself.

It’s a slice of home before she ruined it and they eat in silence, her quiet crying and his silent mourning ignored in favour of listening to the crackly voices of a couple of teenage boys stumbling their way through hosting the local radio station.

Her tears dry to the sound of Bon Jovi and Aerosmith and they share a shy smile when they’ve finished their pie.

They stay in that town long enough that the waitress learns their order and takes to calling them lovebirds.

It’s a lie they both live with, a lie they accept and both silently agree never to look at too deeply.

They live, just them.

No expectations, no ties.

She wonders about the life he dropped when he came to save her from the devil but he never says anything and she’s too afraid to bring it up.

She settles, though slowly, and soon enough her dreams no longer leave her heaving into the toilet at four in the morning and her nightmares no longer leave her screaming and clawing like a cat about to be tossed into a bath.

He gives her the space she needs, the support she craves, and he never asks for anything.

She’s grateful, and she heals, and they move on.

Small town after small town, they drive along making memories out of tiny, insignificant moments; they build up a life to replace the one they lost and slowly but surely it stops feeling like a lie.

He wins her a truly ugly duck at a country fair and she kisses him on the cheek when he presents it to her with much fanfare; she names the duck Walder because one of its wings is sewn on backwards and its eyes are situated in such a way that it’s staring in opposite directions.

She laughs every time she sees it, and she thinks that might be the point.

They lose themselves in a beautiful lavender maze for hours, and even a sudden downpour doesn’t ruin the good mood; it only sees them trapped under a wrought iron gazebo at the middle, sopping wet and laughing as they shiver.

He kisses her there, with his strong hands cupping her cheeks and his lips warm against her own.

It’s like something out of one of his novels and when he pulls away and stares at her as if she’s some rare jewel he means to keep, she’s too weak in the knees to tease him about it.

They move on and fill two disposable cameras with what she knows will be shitty photos but doesn’t mind.

They walk the streets of a small town lined with lemon trees and raised garden beds full of herbs free for the picking.

She smiles as they window shop, as they pretend they’re something they’re not and make up stories about the things they see on shelves and in baskets.

It’s in front of a cheery wedding boutique, when she’s watching a giggly trio of young girls trying on pretty gowns that he surprises her with a sprig of rosemary and a soft smile; he tucks it into her hair with a look in his eyes that says he knows full well the significance but never outright says anything.

She later tucks the sprig into her purse and smiles shyly whenever she sees it.

They flit through towns like ghosts, stopping when the fancy takes them or driving on through when nothing catches their eye.

She doesn’t remember when he took her hand the first time, or when it became so common that she stops thinking on his hand clutching hers in her lap as they cruise down empty backroads.

She knows there’s a part of her that remains bitter and distrusting, that waits for him to spring his trap and break her into so many bite-sized pieces.

She thinks he knows, that he understands because he never pushes, never says anything, never shows himself to be a liar or a beast.

He is the knight who saved her, and the one who is trying to show her that she can save herself.

It’s a truly cold night when she accepts the truth that he’s trying to share with her, that she’s stronger than she thinks, that she’s not a broken doll but a survivor.

He says nothing when she all but corners him in their shared room of a pretty little B&B on the outskirts of nowhere; the room smells of rose potpourri and fresh linen, and when she presses her palm against his bare chest, still damp from his shower, she’s met with the smell of him, clean and earthy and just how she imagined he would.

He’s firm under her palm, and when she slips her hand down, the muscles bunch and jump and tighten as if she’s a live wire drawn across his skin.

She breathes out slowly, once, twice, and then meets his eyes.

There’s a storm raging in the grey, a heat there hot enough to burn her and she feels it as a shiver down her spine, as a wave that steals her breath and leaves her shaking.

He does nothing, simply waits, and she knows, as she stares at him, as he stares back, that he’s letting her have the reins, that this is her party.

She flattens her palm against his ridiculous abdominal muscles and gives him a slight push.

He goes, one step, two steps, three, and she follows until his knees hit the edge of the bed and he sits.

His eyes never leave hers, never lose any of their intensity; it’s like staring into the sun and she finds herself warmed through, finds that all the ice left over from her time in hell has finally begun to melt.

She steps away from him, puts space between them, and he settles, his knees spread and the fluffy towel threatening to slip loose and open.

It stays, holds, and she smiles for the shield it provides.

He never stops watching her, not when his hands shake as she unbuttons her cardigan, not as his cheeks flame as she lifts her chemise over her head and tosses it onto the chair in the corner.

He sits forward and puts his hands together as if in contemplation or silent supplication and his lips part as he watches her strip.

Nerves begin to tighten in her stomach and she gets fidgety, unsure, shy in a way that isn’t appealing or cute.

He’s watching her so intently that he notices easily, and he whispers her name in such a way that she feels steel shoot up her spine and all the fear washes away.

Her skirt flutters to the rug beneath her toes and suddenly she’s bared to him, a tiny smirk tugging at the corners of her sweet smile when his eyes widen and drop instantly to the proof that she’s been walking around all day without panties on.

It feels like a delicious sin, a victory, and one she revels in as he sucks in a breath and lets it out shakily.

She doesn’t think he understands how his reactions change her, how the little things he doesn’t register doing mean everything to the fragile confidence she’s trying so very hard to hold on to.

She steps out of the pool of her skirt and feels beautiful for the first time in her young adult life.

She should be tucked in some dark dorm furiously trying to make her way through the first year of classes she’ll never find a job for, but instead, she’s here, naked as her name day with all her scars and burns and marks on full display and she feels _powerful_.

He’s as a dazed boy when she steps in front of him, when she curls her fingers under his strong chin and lifts his face up to meet her eyes.

She studies him, for so many moments that everything else slips away and she swears she can almost hear his heart thrumming in her ears, can almost feel it racing right next to her own.

It’s as she waits, as she studies him, that she sees it, sees a vulnerability behind the bravery, behind the smiles he sends her when she’s looking, behind the shoulders he sets back and keeps straight.

He’s no more confident about himself than she is, and perhaps, if she’s reading him right, he’s more afraid of her than she is of him.

It softens her, then, when she sees that uncertainty, that fear; it’s not hunger she sees burning hot behind the grey stones of his eyes, eyes swallowed whole by twin black suns swollen in the middle.

The part of her that longed to push him down, to push him onto his back and take what she wanted from him, slips away as a whisper on the winds, and her smile softens.

There’s want in his gaze but it’s not the kind that bites fast and fizzles, it’s the kind that simmers for a lifetime and lingers long after the grave.

He wants her, she can see, but now she knows he always has.

When she kisses him, it’s gentle, soft, a sample of his shy smile and a promise that she won’t break him, that she won’t be to him what the devil was to her.

She goes into his lap slowly, her knees drawn up to hug his ribs and she smiles as he shivers, as his eyes remain wide as if he fears to blink in case she’ll disappear.

His hands are broad and warm when she lifts them to her hips and he holds onto her so steadily that she knows she’s safe in his arms, that she can let herself go and trust that he’ll catch her.

The next time she kisses him, the fire spikes and he pushes back, even if just a little.

It’s pure, free of the sin that should be weighing them down.

_Mother wouldn’t approve._

_But mother isn’t here._

They’re not siblings in that room, not tied by so much blood that the world would shun them for it.

He licks into her mouth and it’s as if she’s always known him, as if she’s coming home.

She curls her arms about his neck, the fingers of one hand going to his damp curls while the other strokes across his shoulders and dances fingertips through the beads of water still clinging to his warm skin.

His hands move, from her hips to her thighs and he clings to her, drags her closer and lets a heavy breath go through his nose as he tries his levelled best to devour her whole.

She doesn’t mind the thought of being eaten if he’s the one come to feast.

He wraps an arm around her, his fingers spreading wide over her scarred spine but he never pauses, never stops to drag the monster from its cage and for it, she’s grateful.

He’s sturdy despite not being overly tall, and his hands know her body as if they’ve danced these steps before.

She breaks the kiss to keen loudly when he drags her higher in his lap and she’s made very aware of what he’s hiding beneath the fluffy B&B towel.

She has no idea if he’ll even fit, but she’s not about to stop to take measurements, and simply goes with it when he lifts her as if she weighs no more than a feather and jerks the towel away.

_Well then._

She knows, just from having him pressed against her belly, that she’s going to be walking funny in the morning.

_And she’s never looked more forward to anything in her life._

When he pulls away, it’s with a look in his eyes that says he’s not sure, that he’s afraid of pushing, afraid of her, and so she smiles and shifts her hold of him enough to cup his face.

They share no words but then they don’t need to.

He kisses her again and it feels different, deeper, and she half expects him to put her on her back and have at her right away.

It doesn’t happen.

He pulls away to look at her again, to study her, to stare into her eyes as if he’s looking for something lost.

Whatever it is, he finds it, because his gaze travels then, freely, and the heat never goes out in his eyes as he takes in the soft peaks of her small breasts.

A moment of insecurity begins to bloom in her gut, but it’s torn up root and stem and tossed away as he lifts a hand to cup a fleshy mound and dips his head to mouth at her tit.

It feels as if he’s breathing fire across her skin, fire that seeps into her pores and shoots straight down into her core.

She rocks her hips and chokes on a breath when he sucks harder, when he fills his mouth with her breast and groans.

His fingers dig into her spine and it feels good, a good bite that keeps her grounded, that keeps her steady, that has her rolling her hips just to get more of his thick cock pressed along her cunt.

She can’t help but laugh then, the room filling with the breathy sound of it as she grips his dark hair and rubs her clit against the hot line of him.

He should be making porn but instead he’s right there, making her feel like a silly girl with flowers in her hair and dreams in her head.

She’s not a broken girl with mottled skin, a shattered ghost with demons in her past; there, with him looking at her like she’s the brightest star in the night sky, she’s a girl in love.

She pulls away enough to cup his face with both hands and then she leans in to kiss him, to share his breath and share his innocence.

He holds her as if she’ll break, as if she’s the most precious thing in the world, and when she pushes up onto her knees and then sinks down onto his truly, ridiculously, fat cock, he holds her as if she’s the only thing keeping him alive.

She’s never felt so full in her life.

All the holes punched into her spirit fill, all the tears mend until her tapestry no longer resembles a tattered rag but becomes some beautiful dream to cover up the scarred wall of her history.

He clings to her as she rides him, slow and steady and as if they have all the time in the world and even when he spills sooner than he thinks is right, a blush bursting high and bright across his cheeks, she doesn’t think it could be any more perfect.

She kisses away his apologies and wraps her legs around his back; her ankles lock and she holds him, stays close, and enjoys the fire of his desire for her.

He lasted longer than she thought he would, longer than she’d hoped.

She expects nothing after that, and smiles with the hope that he’ll let her cuddle him, that he’ll let her stay in his arms, filled of him and warm.

Instead, he holds her, just enough to keep her pressed along his front as he lays her down and slowly starts to move.

The fire never leaves her blood, and she knows she’ll be truly impressed in the morning when her mind isn’t hazy and her brain isn’t so much mush in her skull.

He never softens, never tires out.

He’s gentle as he takes her, as he kisses her, as he holds her when his hips start to snap and her world becomes bliss.

She wonders if it feels so good because he’s bad for her, because he’s the one thing she shouldn’t want.

Her trimmed nails make a poor attempt at scratching down his spine when his pace quickens and she cries out as the slow thrum of her end starts to pulse, starts to grow, starts to burn.

Thought leaves her when he plants his hand beside her head and lifts himself enough to move without the jarring rub of flesh; she has a moment to miss the press of his hard chest against hers but it’s gone as she spreads her thighs further apart and grips his arse as he sets about trying his levelled best to fuck her brains out.

It’s glorious.

It’s perfect.

His name is the sweetest sin on her tongue, and she cries out in delight to know she’s a sinner like him.

Neither of them care.

They don’t stop.

She doesn’t tumble over the edge so much as she takes a running leap and flings herself willingly into the abyss.

Her vision becomes nothing but black spots on a white field as he fills her again and again and moans her name against her ear as if it’s the only word he ever needs or wants to say again.

Her body feels on fire in the best ways and she pants as her heart races, as her mind stops working; he stutters in his last few thrusts and they moan together as he spills hot and thick a second time.

She can’t stop shaking, just as she can’t stop the shaky laugh that leaves her when he wraps an arm around her and presses soft kisses along her throat and her jaw.

She mewls when he nips at her mouth, and their eyes lock as they share breath, their lips ghosting close as he slips his hand between them and lazily strokes his thumb in circles against her pulsing clit.

She can’t stand it but she doesn’t want him to stop.

He’s soft by the time she shakes apart in his arms, but he fills her no less for being so.

They stop moving then, simmering down as the fire sets to smoulder; there’s a glint in his eye that she doesn’t know the name of but knows it for a promise.

She’s safe, there, in his arms, there, with him.

_She’s safe._

And so she cries, with a smile on her face, and lets go of all the last of the monsters that have been dogging her shadows since he stormed her castle.

He says nothing, but his kisses say everything.

And when she finally falls into sleep, it’s in his arms, it’s warm and alive and for the first time, she’s not afraid.

She dreams, but there are no more demons in her closet or monsters under her bed.

They stay there, in that little slice of heaven, wrapped up in themselves for the week that follows until the owners send them on their way with kind smiles and gentle apologies.

A function, or something, all booked out, but they don’t mind, don’t care.

They’re hand-in-hand as they leave, hand-in-hand as they drive away; they’re hand-in-hand when an hour later he pulls the car over so she can climb into his lap and fill herself full of sin.

They stop pretending, stop hiding what they know others don’t see but used to fear anyway.

No one knows.

No one cares.

They laugh over ice-creams in the late afternoons of autumn, and spend their nights mapping each other’s stories with fingers and tongues.

Kisses by the fire linger long after sleep claims her, she learns, and she smiles when they hit the road and their latest tryst soaks the panties she’s taken to wearing just to keep the white from staining the upholstery.

She’s free as a bird, wings wide as she glides right on out of her shadowed cage and into the sun.

He smiles more, freer too, and his kisses taste like joy when he grips her hand and pulls her against him for all the world to see.

He buys her a proper camera, some fancy polaroid with a box full of film because she likes the way the photo’s look when she shakes their memories into physical existence.

There’s one of them jammed into the corner of her visor, twin smiles shining bright and a reminder of the day she stepped out of the shower and stunned him stupid with the tiny swell of her once flat belly.

She thought there would be fear, that the sickness she feels in the mornings was proof of the monsters they’ve become, but it always passes and the fear is never there.

She grows, and so too do their smiles.

It’s a little thing, the ring he buys her, a band of silver to compliment her pale skin and a sapphire flanked by twin diamonds to match the blue of her eyes.

He’s sweet on her, she knows, and she’s finally comfortable enough to tease him about the stack of crappy romance novels that take to filling the floor of the backseat.

They’re both romantics, and they make the most of what they have, but she knows, soon enough, they’ll have to stop, they’ll have to settle, they’ll have to open their eyes and look what they’ve done in the face.

No more hiding.

She fears that more than the child that grows in her belly, a child that shouldn’t be there, a sin that took root the night he spilled too soon and kissed away all of her shadows.

He never lets her lose herself inside her head, always pulls her back into the light with a smile and the press of his lips to the backs of her knuckles.

He drives, on and on, as if he knows where he’s going, what future he’s taking her to, and she trusts him, trusts him in a way she’s never trusted anyone.

Still, the fears are there, lingering, waiting, and as she swaps out her normal clothes for loose dresses and long skirts that don’t pinch and pull and dig into places that have swollen and shifted, she worries.

What will happen next?

What happens when the happy bubble they’ve built around themselves finally pops?

Where will they go?

How will they live?

Who will find them and what happens when their sins are dragged kicking and screaming into the light?

He’s always there, gentle and sweet, with a whisper of praise on his lips and a warm hand on the base of her sore back.

He drops her at a baby store one day with a wink and a smirk and drives away in the ordinary car they’ve lived their lives in for the last few months.

She pushes down on the thought that he’s left her high and dry and with a sin in her womb that seems to enjoy sleeping on her bladder and kicking the living shit out of her ribs, and wanders the organised chaos of a store that smiles prettily as it exploits expectant parents and claims it’s perfectly reasonable to charge extortionist prices for the same shit she can go and get from Walmart for ten bucks.

 _Less than_ , she thinks, _and with change left over to buy chocolate_.

She caves, though, and cries as she fills a basket with cute little onesies with wolves on them; she’s sure to grab two of each size because she knows babies grow like freaking weeds and she’s sentimental and an emotional mess.

She leaves the store with a massive tote on her shoulder and sniffles as she waits for her fears to swallow her whole or be proven wrong.

He comes back, and she cries to see him, cries to touch him, cries as he nuzzles her jaw and pulls her into his arms to hold her close, their sinful little secret tucked safe and warm between them.

Someone makes a comment she doesn’t hear but they scurry away when her brother tells them to fuck off in that gravelly deep voice he knows she likes the best.

Her cries turn to laughter then, and the laughter turns to giddy squeals as he swings her up in his arms bridal style and carries her to a shiny new SUV that sparkles like a freshly polished black gem beneath the sun.

It rides like a dream, that new-car-smell fresh and leathery, and the seats are soft and wide and lay back with the single push of a button.

She has him, then, in some backwater carpark, and screams his name as he fills her up and guides her up and down his cock until they both shake apart and forget what day of the week it is.

It takes her two days to see it for what it is, to see the hidden message.

The rental is gone, and he’s dropped big bucks on a sturdy car he fills with boxes and bags full of things for the child they don’t acknowledge shouldn’t be theirs.

She spends too much time thinking about it, and starts paying attention to where he’s going, where he’s driving.

He must notice, because the smiles turn wistful, his eyes take on a faraway gleam, and she starts to wonder why he says nothing, why he simply kisses her as if it answers everything.

Soon enough he tells her, when the smiles have turned fond and the fighter he’s bred into her belly has taken to punching up her insides whenever he speaks; he laughs at that, at the stink-eye she gives him for encouraging such poor behaviour, and whispers his answer against her lips in a kiss that promises forever.

_Home._

He’s taking her home.

She doesn’t understand, and the fear creeps in through the gaps in all of her pieces, but she grips his hand so tightly her fingers ache, and trusts him.

She stops asking, stops expecting the end, and soon enough she gets it, she understands.

They slow their journey in a town that looks like every other one they’ve passed through.

Its homes are small and sweet, white cladding walls weather worn but no less charming for the wear.

Wild flowers sprout everywhere, patches here and there as if some hippy has danced through the cracked streets and tossed seedlings with every enthusiastic twirl.

She finds that she can’t keep the smile from her face as she looks at them, at the splashes of pinks and purples and cheery yellows that draw her gaze as she watches the world go by.

He turns soon enough, smile still soft and secret, but there’s a sadness in his gaze, a tight pinch around the eyes that hints at his own worries, so she takes his hand and gives his perpetually busted knuckles a kiss to show all the reassurances words won’t.

They drive, on and on, down a long dirt drive that soon gets covered in by trees that grow tall and thick.

The wildlife runs rampant between the trees, like something out of a dream or one of his romance novels; she half expects to see faeries flitting between the flowers that sprinkle the fields or will-o'-the-wisps beckoning them forward on the gentle breeze.

It keeps the smile on her lips and the fear from her gut.

They eventually slow, though, when the trees fan out and surround a pretty little cottage tucked up inside the woods.

It’s no small thing, though not overly large, and she smiles to see the thatching, the wooden eves and the swinging bench hung in the corner of the little porch; there’s more flowers, this time greys and whites that speak of the winter to come.

It’s some kind of fantasy, a wonderland.

She smiles as he opens her door and helps her from her seat, and she looks around as he holds her hand and lets her openly gape.

She wonders how it’s remained so hidden, so separate from the world.

And then she wonders why.

But it’s a thought that leaves her quickly, just along with all the others.

The little white door opens and the squeaky hinge is drowned by the clatter of little feet on wooden decking and the shouts of excited children.

Her heart stops when she watches them jump the four steps and race off to the stretch of grassland leading over to a very large, very old willow tree that sways gently in the breeze and gives her hints of the little bench settled behind the curtain of its leafy strands.

She stares at them, those two small boys, as they roughhouse on the grass, smiles broad on long faces, grey eyes bright and shining beneath shaggy dark hair.

They share faces, she notes, and thinks they must be twins.

Her gaze goes to her brother, half her blood and someone else’s, and she can’t help but search his face for some sign that they’re his, that he’s tricked her and dragged her into some cabin in the woods where he means to make her some star child with flowers in her hair and a babe in her belly every other year to match the half a dozen other girls he’s charmed.

As if he hears the thoughts racing through her mind, he laughs and shakes his head, his messy mop of midnight curls bouncing around his face until he runs a hand over the lot and shoves it all back and out of the way.

Whatever he means to say is interrupted by the clearing of a deep throat, and tears spring to her eyes of their own accord.

_She knows that voice._

Even without words, she’d know it anywhere.

She risks whiplash as she turns her head sharply, her bright blue eyes wide and locking instantly onto the man she once destroyed.

He hasn’t changed, even with the years that have turned his whiskers a mix of black and grey, and have deepened the lines of laughter around his warm grey eyes and softly smiling mouth.

Her heart clenches in her chest and she covers her mouth with her hand to hide the cry that wants to rip from her lungs and echo through the clearing.

He’s happy, happy and standing tall with a wonky terracotta mug in his hand and a pair of old man slippers on his feet.

She chokes on a laugh, on a cry, and whimpers like a frightened child lost in a dream when her brother steps up to her side and rubs gentle circles over her aching spine.

The words he whispers in her ear are lost on the wind, lost in the webs of her mind as she watches the man she thought she’d ruined grin and turn to the girl she’d devastated as she steps out onto the porch with a soft smile on her pretty face and a toddler on her wide hip.

It isn’t real, she tries to tell herself.

None of it.

The flowers are long dead and turned to scraggly weeds and the woods are the walls of a hell she put herself into.

There is no home for her, no place to call her own.

No brother to save her, to hold her, to love her in a way he shouldn’t.

_There is no redemption._

She blinks back the tears that blind her and expects to see that room again, that bed where her blood stained the sheets and her body wept for the pain brought on by blades and fists.

He’ll be there, she knows, that devil that snared her.

He’ll be at her back, in her head, he’ll come with his knives and his grins and the laughs that aren’t laughs but warnings.

There is no safety, no way out.

There is no happiness, not for silly girls who break their homes.

_There is no happiness._

Hands settle on her cheeks, soft and slight and long fingered, and the tears spill over to be wiped away by thumbs that are elegant and slender and tipped with clean long nails.

She sucks in a breath and stares into the grey stone eyes of the sister she told on, the sister who used to braid her hair and sing her pretty songs and sneak her second servings of the lemon cakes she was never allowed to splurge on because their mother always slapped her hands and told her she’d get fat.

She’s there, sweet and gentle, and the fear and pain and anger, and the well of sorrows that has been her life since the day she skipped into a yellow kitchen to tell their mother a secret, bursts open and spills over.

She breaks.

She breaks, and her sister is there to hold her as she crumbles.

Her sobs are horrible things, loud and dragged up from the very depths of her tattered soul.

She has no right to be there, to cling to her sister so tightly, to bury her face in her dark hair and inhale the comforting smell of green apples and snow.

Time loses meaning as she’s comforted, as she claws at that olive branch and sobs over it.

Her sister holds her through it, shushes her in a way only a mother can, and strokes a pale hand over the haircut that has lost its edge and all its shadows.

The first thing she notices when she comes back to herself isn’t the tears she’s stained her sisters dress with, or the snot that clogs up her nose and makes her snuffles truly awful, it isn’t the babble of a brook that must cut through the clearing close by or the sounds of a bastard son sharing pleasant conversations with a tired father.

It’s the space between them, the awkward tilt they’re in, the weird embrace.

She looks down and words fail her.

 _Oh_ , is all she can say as she stares.

And then she giggles, and it’s a light and happy sound, and matched by the high bell laugh of the sister who refuses to let her go.

There is no space between them, no gap, no black hole set there to swallow them both whole.

Her belly is round and high beneath her sun dress, and currently snuggled close and fighting for room with the heavy round of her sister’s own bump.

When their eyes meet, there’s mirth there in the grey, a secret joy that was always there but that she never understood.

They study each other, and find that time hasn’t stolen the closeness, and neither has her betrayal.

The tears swell, but when they make to drown her, her sister smiles softly and brushes them away with a gentleness she doesn’t deserve but is given freely.

A hand catches hers, lifts it high and settles it on the baby growing in her sisters womb; she chokes on a weepy laugh when she feels a harsh kick against her palm, and then laughs more when her joy is mirrored as she returns the gesture and feels her own baby punch up against the unknown warmth of a palm against her bump.

They share it, that moment, and she knows then that all is forgiven, that the stupidity of her youth isn’t held against her.

They separate only when the small toddler cries for his mother, grey eyes filled to the brim with fat tears that soak into his chubby cheeks and only go away when he’s in his mother’s arms and snuggled against her heavy breasts.

He’s a small lad, she thinks, barely out of his swaddling blankets and still very much attached to his mother.

Her gaze flits from the clinging tot to her sister’s large belly and she can’t help the breathy laugh that bubbles up in her chest.

_She clearly isn’t wasting any time._

Their eyes meet, sisters reunited, and they share a look and laugh more, smiles bright, and she goes easily when she’s led inside, hand in hand with the sister she once forsook in her childish need to please their mother.

It clicks, as she’s walking up the steps, eyes locked with the little boy’s over a slender shoulder.

There’s nothing but wolf in his features, the look of the north about him in a way she didn’t note at first glance.

She stares, even when he hides away, dark locks a perfect match with the ones of the woman who carries him.

_A perfect match with the man who shares kind words with their brother behind them._

She follows, lost for words, and continues to stare as she’s led into a cosy little living room with a fire gently crackly in the hearth and blankets tossed haphazardly over plump sofas that don’t match.

The two boys from the yard rush by her, skirting her with an expertise that they’ve clearly learned while rushing around their heavily pregnant mother.

They settle into a large chair together, and their faces are the same, theirs and their parents.

Dark locks, long faces, and the grey eyes she didn’t inherit from her father and doesn’t share with her sister or their half-brother.

She gulps, as she looks at them, and swallows down the ball that forms when she flicks her eyes to her sister where she fusses over a tray of homemade lemon cakes and sweet tea with one hand while she cuddles with the toddler who watches her every move like a curious cat perched high on a post.

The boy is sweet, shy, with one fist in her dark hair and the other grasping tightly at the scooped collar of her dress and near exposing half of one heavy breast.

She shuffles forward as the menfolk finally step inside, and she’s fascinated by the dance that starts before her eyes.

Arms slip around her swollen middle as she watches, stupefied, as her father moves into the little kitchen with a carefree smile on his face and a gentleness about him as he smooths a wide-palmed hand over the large swell of her sisters belly and dips the differences in their height to kiss her in a way he shouldn’t.

She’s seen that kiss before.

It’s fondness, a kiss that speaks of a love that transcends the word and comes strictly from the soul.

She would know that kiss anywhere, she’s felt it for herself just recently.

She turns her head when that same kiss is pressed to her cheek by a different man, a wolf that loves his little mate above everything else.

She knows, then, in that little cabin, in that little den, that she’s found the hidden wolves.

It’s there, in a living room surrounded by children that shouldn’t exist, by family that loves each other in a way they shouldn’t, that she’s found what he promised her.

And for the first time since she tore her world apart, she finds that the pieces of her life finally fit back together again.

She didn’t break them, didn’t tear them to pieces.

They’re there, right there, happy and hale and together, and she knows just in seeing them, that she’ll be okay.

There are no shadows in the den they’ve made their own; there are no shadows, not in them and no longer in her.

She knows then that she’s finally where she belongs, in the place where the pack fled to thrive.

She knows then that she’s finally found what she’s always been missing.

_Home._

She’s home.

And she’s never been more thankful.


End file.
